Difference in using dividers in TITLE TAG
-
Hi everyone, i know that dividers in title or even title tag doesnt have much of an impact on better rankings. I had great rankings for many keywords, not using dividers or using only one divider. However for better reading comprehension and usability, and also aesthetics i started to use the pipe as my main divider and other secondary dividers. I saw many pages drop in rankings vs other less competent and with less content pages. My format was as follows:
Product Brand | Product description - Additional info or local info
ie. Fiber Glass MBI | Insulation Batts for Home and Commercial use - Acoustic and Thermal Insulation
I changed the format for a handful of pages, and saw immediate results on rankings and traffic on those pages.
Product Brand with Product Description - Additional Info
ie. Fiber Glass MBI Insulation Batts for Commercial use - Acoustic and Thermal Insulation.
Does it sound like something i should implement page wide. I personally like the aesthetics of the pipe as it gives a cleaner look, but the better rankings on the changed pages with using only one divider makes me think. Does it sound familiar, or its just a coincidence,
Regards,
-
Thanks for the response and follow up. I will dig deeper as to why the better rankings and incoming traffic recently.
Regards,
-
I would say more links and new/refreshed content would definitely have more to do with it than the presence or absence of a pipe.
With a pipe the title will be slightly longer. The example titles you gave seem on the long side, but nothing longer than most in that industry.
-
As i am responsible for the page changes, i didnt do much really. Just some minor tweaks in the description page, some new content, my incoming links have been increasing slightly. But i see better results with the pages with titles with no dividers.
Maybe its a coincidence, i just thought maybe something was going on with the dividers. But it doesnt seem that way. Is there anything else i might be missing as why these pages rank better than other similar pages?
Great star trek example haha, thanks!
-
Negative, its a network solutions hosted page. With regular code.
-
I also changed the meta description tag in these pages. I did some general content maintenance, such as review the outgoing links, add some images, but nothing else.
My incoming links have been increasing since July, but ive seen better results with the pages with Title Tags with no dividers or only one divider. I need to dig deeper, as i researched that the title tag alone doesnt make much of a difference.
-
The problem with figuring out the benefit of these minute changes is that there are thousands of other changes that have occurred. Many of them are out of our control. So while you were experimenting with separators, another webmaster might have made a change that made a competing page or pages decrease. And that's just one example.
It would make for an interesting outlying case if your site/pages were positioned just so that one weird, seemingly innocuous, tweak made the difference.
If you've seen the first film in the Star Trek reboot, you might remember how Scotty figured out his transporter problem. Well, actually Future Spock just gave it to him - since Future Scotty was going to fix the problem anyway. But upon looking at the calculations, Scotty realized that space itself was also moving. Which was why his previous experiments were a disaster.
What I'm saying is, aside from 'I'm a dork', is nothing exists in a vacuum. It's very hard to determine if a tiny change had a positive benefit. There are so many external factors/moving parts. Though it would help reduce uncertainty if you didn't change anything else.
-
Was this a Wordpress blog and did you install a plugin to do these changes ?
-
Jesus,
Did you change anything else besides just inserting the pipes?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Question about Homepage Title
Hi there, I recently made a change to the title URL for my site, and it changed how Google displayed my sitemap. Before it showed the most common sites, and now it simply links to 4 of them below the domain URL without descriptions. I have attached images below which shows my problem. I hope this is the right section for this question. Thanks! 5ypdnY2 4u2HAia
On-Page Optimization | | One20 -
Using Canonical & INDEX, FOLLOW meta tag
I am sort of new to this, and working with an overseas development team on an eCommerce site. I am curious if the Canonical tag will supersede the tag, or if it is best to remove this tag entirely for duplicate product pages?
On-Page Optimization | | BretDarby1 -
Identifying Duplicate Page Title
Moz weekly reports, among other things, the "Duplicate Page Title". How can I identify which two urls/pages have duplicate page titles? Is there any simple way to trace?
On-Page Optimization | | Sequelmed0 -
SEO HTML: Header tags
A few of quick SEO questions regarding header tags: More than one tag per page. If there is more than one tag on a page: are both taken into consideration and what if they contain the same keyword? Eg on the page: http://en.emilea.be/childrens-clothes/molo/boys/cardigans-and-sweaters/ MoloBoysCardigans & sweaters ... Molo childrens clothes Is the 2nd considered when indexing the page? Since both tags contain the same keyword (but in different context) is this a SEO plus or minus? Nested tags inside header tags. I presume the nested tags are omitted, but if there is no white space between the tags are these concatenated? <span tag='molo'>Molo<span tag='boys'>Boys<span tag='cardigans-and-sweaters'>Cardigans & sweaters</span tag='cardigans-and-sweaters'></span tag='boys'></span tag='molo'> How is the above header processed? MoloBoysCardigans & sweaters
On-Page Optimization | | Webxtrakt
or
2) Molo Boys Cardigans & sweaters Order of header tags.
How important is the order of header tags and how do they influence the following content. F.ex. if the top part of the page contains multiple tags and the middle part contains 1-2 tags. Does this affect the importance of the tags and would it be better to use tags above? Thanks in advance.0 -
Using Robots Meta Tag on Review Form Pages
I have gone over this so many times and I just can't seem to get it straight and hope someone can help me out with a couple of questions: Right now, on my dynamically created pages created by filters (located on the category pages) I am using rel""canonical" to point them to their respective category page. Should I also use the robots meta tag as well? Similarly, each product I have on my site has a review form on it and thus is getting indexed by Google. I have placed the same canonical tag on them as well pointing them to the page with the review form on it. In the past I used robots.txt to block google from the review pages but this didn't really do much. Should I be using the robots meta tag on these pages as well? If I used the robots meta tag should I noindex,nofollow? Thanks in advance, Jake
On-Page Optimization | | jake3720 -
Title tags for deep pages
Just pondering what is current best practice for Title tags of pages buried deep within my website? Say I have a page about 'Cheese's of the world' and from that page there is a page about 'Cheshire Cheese' how would you suggest to structure title tags Would for example this be ok - Cheshire Cheese | Cheese's of the World | Brand name Or is this better - Cheshire Cheese | Brand name Just wondering as I'm redesigning my site currently and looking at everything! Ted PS - I like cheese 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | Jon-C0 -
Tags on blog post
I have just ran a report on SEOMOZ and it's came back saying I have over 1000 pages on my website with duplicate content, I thought wow that's not good, however when I looked at the report it was counting duplicate content because I have used more than one tag on a blog post, for example the blog post: www.example.com/blog-post/ Has the tags example 1 example 2 example 3 Meaning I have these URLs www.example.com/blog/tag/example-1 www.example.com/blog/tag/example-2 www.example.com/blog/tag/example-3 All 3 URLs above have the same content as www.example.com/blog-post/ because of the tags, is this a problem? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Paul781 -
Canonical Tag for Ecommerce Site
I implemented a canonical tag on each product page for my clients ecommerce site and my rankings tanked. Has this happened to anyone else? If so, when can I expect rank to return?
On-Page Optimization | | DynoSaur0